


Taking Out The Trash

by NeoQwerty



Category: Rockman X | Mega Man X
Genre: Axl Has Multiple Personas, Axl Hears Dead People's Voices, Axl Is A Teenage Assassin (And It Shows), Dark Axl (Rockman), Gen, OC character deaths, Post-Rockman X7 | Mega Man X7, Red Alert Is Not Quite Dead, Reploid Headcanons in End Notes, fake personalities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:14:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26896519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoQwerty/pseuds/NeoQwerty
Summary: With Sigma's fall and the collapse of the Red Alert Syndicate, the Maverick Hunters consider their work done, content to call the scarred teenage Reploid who joins their ranks a "recently discovered prototype and a promising young recruit" and hide his origins.In the underground, the crime families also breathe a sigh of relief, finally rid of their most powerful enemy and the days of lawless vigilantism keeping their profits down and their numbers culled. Crime and traffic of unregistered Reploids, for labor and spare parts alike, climbs steadily back up.Axl decides that being only a Hunter isn't doing enough to keep his city clean, and it's not like Red Alert can ever die while he's still functional. So it's time to take out the trash, back like in the good old days.
Relationships: Axl & Red (Rockman), Axl & Red Alert (Rockman)
Kudos: 3





	Taking Out The Trash

Voseo can sleep much, much better, now that the Red Alert Syndicate is all done and gone, wiped to the last by the Maverick Hunters.

It feels refreshing, to no longer have to worry about Cedar and Aluce's deaths and what they might have given away on the Guerdon Family's business deals. He's still alert, certainly, because one has to be in the underground, especially when they're trafficking Reploids and reselling the scraped goods off to people looking for obedient mindless bodyguards.

For all the regulations about Reploid autonomy, there's always more demand for Reploids without their emotions and an unconditional subservience to humans. And the Guerdon Family is happy to be the suppliers.

Voseo smiles as he enters his plush apartment topside, biolocking the door, and changes from his business armor to civilian casualwear. The armor slot expansion is a fantastic feature mod to have splurged on in celebration of Red Alert's destruction at the hands of the Federation's blind, leashed dogs!

He connects to the smart TV on the wall, and settles into the plush, Reploid-reinforced loveseat to relax, nudging a bowl of stim-candies into reach of his lazily outstretched arm, and popping one of the white cubes into his mouth, letting the stabilizing shell melt and release its cloud of electrochemical signals, coating his mouth. The effect trickles in gradually, pulling Voseo deeper and deeper into his own processes and sensory signals, sinking into a trance-like overload of data at the slightest movement he has his body undertake. Merely drumming his fingers is enough to fully satisfy his requirements for interaction.

When he comes out of the trance, there's bored green eyes right in his face. He blinks. The focus-screws in those old-style eyes twist abruptly, and the Reploid they belong to pulls back. He's sitting on Vaseo's floor like it's his apartment, and a wave of indignation rushes through him as he sits up sharply.

"How did you get in h--HEY!"

A hand flies at his head, clamping down over his earcone, and he can't stop a startled yelp as his communications suite instantly crashes down. He raises a hand up toward his ear, and in the next second a pair of heavy-grade hexacuffs clamps on his wrist joins and magnetically wrenches his hands together.

"Wait--you're, you're the new Hunter recruit! The one who helped put down those rabid Red Alert thugs! What are you--"

The black Reploid drawls out a reply, youthful, rough voice full of carefree insolence, eyes glittering with mischief and triumph.

"Y'know, a lotta people thinks me takin' out the Syndicate because it's gone Maverick means they're free to go back to all their crappy deals that fly under the Hunters' radar."

Voseo stills for a second, before frowning, affecting confused concern and alarm.

"I'm not sure I follow... Aren't you a Hunter? Aren't Hunters required to follow laws? If you're chasing after Red Alert's leads like a vigilante, I doubt your commanding officer will like it. Even less when you assault innocent business Reploids in their own properties."

The Reploid teenager nods along, before beaming at him as a gun appears in his hands. The Hunter-- if that's really what he is-- starts idly turning it around, giving it some idle flips. Then he raises his eyes, the smile gone from his face. Voseo's talked with a human once, one with dead, beady eyes, who made even his threat assessment take note. This Reploid's eyes are glowing, but they're just as dead.

Then the gun lines up with his head for a processor shot.

The Reploid's eyes glow from within, a wash of intricate red and orange-speckled yellow in the pupils, contrasting with his green irises.

Red's voice comes out of the black assassin's throat, entwined with that young voice.

"Unfortunately for you, there's still _one_ member of the Syndicate alive."

Other voices join the first, each with their own inflections, but all synchronized, and the black Reploid's voice synthesizer accommodates this trick without issue. It's freaky, and it frays his nerves rapidly.

"So, wanna guess who I am, Voseo?"

"I--I don't know!"

"Awh. Shame."

The Reploid glows white-hot, and then Voseo blanches as Cedar is the one staring him down, barred amber eyes emotionless, and the gun held steady in much larger hands. It's Cedar's soft voice that talks next.

"Is the larger picture a little clearer, now, Voseo?"

"...You're the one who took out Aluce's branch half a year ago!"

The Reploid returns to the teenager's body, but Vaseo wonders if that's even his true shape. The gun glows as it charges, and the teen muses with a terrifyingly flat voice that sends shudders down his spine.

"It's really handy that absorbing Red's DNA-Data powered up my Copy Shot. Now I don't have to waste time roughing you scumbags up to steal your memories and forms."

The gun fires, and his world tears apart in a flash of red and orange-streaked yellow, HUD tearing apart as something, deeper down, is forcefully wrenched free. 

The only thing left to feel is terror as some great unfeeling mechanism erodes him into nothingness, until all that's left is a tiny, terrified spark of consciousness that the Soul Eraser discards.

The small spark of life exists for only a handful of seconds before a bigger, hungrier lifeform crushes it and claims its terrified energy to empower itself.

Axl tilts his head to a side as the whispers in his ear increase in intensity, before he grins as he looks at the dead body, half-blown apart.

"So, do we gun for Guerdon first and watch the others scatter in fright, or tighten the noose a bit more by taking out Kit?"

The teenager nods in response to something only he hears through the silence of the apartment, standing up to recover Voseo's stash of zenny and emergency supplies from the concealed wall panel, before he shimmers, and then disappears on encrypted 'dark' tele-satellites for a Red Alert safehouse.

**Author's Note:**

> Headcanon context:
> 
> Axl's Chameleon Chip, when it absorbs DNA-Data, also consumes the Reploid's soul. If you get killed by the Copy Shot, you will never hit Cyberspace, you're just going to join the graveyard of dying ghosts that gets slowly corrupted and overwritten by new DNA-Data. Axl can choose to protect some of the DNA-Souls by saving them into specific slots and then flagging them as read-only.
> 
> Axl's a Soul Eraser, created by Berkana as part of a series of Reploids meant specifically to obtain Zero and X's DNA-Data for Sigma, but wasn't ever fully completed. The Federation found him and tried to test and complete him to have ammo to finally "outdo" X and Zero-- and then they fed him Vile's DNA-Data as a test. Red found the secret Federation facility Axl went berserk in and salvaged the factory-reset test Reploid and it was Red Alert that gave him his design.


End file.
